Wave of touch notebooks coming in second half 2009
updated 01:20 pm EDT, Thu May 7, 2009
Touchscreen notebooks due
Taiwanese notebook manufacturers are developing touchscreen notebooks for use with Windows 7, which natively supports touch inputs, DigiTimes reported on Thursday, citing market sources. Working together with touchscreen panel makers, Wistron and Quanta are planning on releasing notebooks that use infrared optical touch screens, while ASUS and Acer are rumored to get projective capacitive touch and resistive touch panels.
The optical touch technology is expected to be used in notebooks sized at 15 inches or larger, as it will add thickness to the frame, but will cost relatively less than fitting a touch panel on an LCD screen. The more expensive projective capacitive touch and resistive touch panels have better and more sensitive control, and allow a lower-profile, frameless design.
Windows 7 is designed to be significantly more touch-friendly than previous versions of Windows and will support multi-touch gestures, including for some apps that don't have touch support built-in.
